Groomed Orderly Dirty and Dying. Chapter 2.
Returning to UCLA is the thing I’ve dreaded most since the moment I landed in Uganda. I’m scared of re-adaptation and the old comforts I’d long forgotten. I’m intimidated by the status and the wealth and the circumstance of it all makes me a little sad and a little more queasy. But since I’ve been back it’s been nice. Food is varied and available. Infrastructure is reliable. Internet is regrettably accessible. My home is clean and my friends give warm hugs- the ones a little longer than standard issue. The ones where we’re both letting something out. Time to fold the cards buddy.
I missed you.
And since I’ve been back everything has been quiet. I’ve shut out the noise, but I’ll keep plugging my ears and jumping at flashes for the following weeks. And I know studying looms around the corner, but until then I’ll laugh alone in the frozen section and walk slowly down the sidewalk.
Africa time.
Last night I ended up at a rooftop party. My friends were all there. We played beer pong and smoked weed and listened to alt music and after a drunk white girl jumped into the pool around midnight we stumbled about the absurdity of it until we stripped down and joined her. Kids were puking over fences and peeing in bushes. My two friends were practicing moves from Dirty Dancing in the pool and a girl is audibly questioning her sexuality in the hot tub. Another boy is talking business. Investment I think.
It all feels a bit...collegiate.
A friend of mine sits down next to me after a while. The steam rising from the hot tub and the liquor on his breath begin to split the different groups of people. Chlorine and Vodka float up the dark, stately night air and leave slow curtains in its wake. Thomas and I sit alone.
He’s upset at something. I heard him yelling earlier how his parents are pressuring him to marry a Chinese girl. How they want him to become a doctor like his father. His father went to Harvard. A brain surgeon of all things. Thomas just goes to UCLA.
Thomas worked with the National Park Service this summer. A dream job where he dug trails and spent the rest of his time listening to the sounds of truly epic mountains high in the Grand Tetons.
“I found myself out there. It’s stupid to say, I know...it’s Wyoming. But I really did.”
I knew it was coming. Give a boy with tension in his mind a shovel and some time and much more than dirt begins to be dug. We grumbled over vanity and as the last drops of vodka soaked into that dirt left in his mind the talking turned to yelling.
“YEaAH bUT EVAN yOU GoT iT ALL figUReD oUT. YOU gEt IT aND tHeY DoN’T!” was Thomas’ response to my floundering support of his Chinese marriage. I’m drunk myself and the music in my head sounds pleasantly off beat. The Black Keys have been in there for weeks. This particular song is heavy on drums. I prefer that.
I think some more and laugh at how getting it means running away from home with my safety haplessly in tow. How it brings stress to my loved ones and no security for myself. How IT is fucking scary to dance with and how when she steps on my toes the only apology is a bleeding desk job.
So being back with my friends is easy but being back with the West is hard. I can’t stop answering questions about it. To everyone and to myself. They loom with every greeting and steer my social life. I knew it was coming and I knew it would be weird.
“ 08/31/19.
The isolation won't stop when I return.
Home. "How was your trip!?"
...
UGANDA?
I swallow.
It burns.
The impossibly approaching arrival-
What words exist to define the energy in these mountains?
The seas of children playing
in
The dark reaches of my mind.
The taste of this dirt-
the way it lingers in my hair
and packs in my teeth
clinging to miles
and reaching for sky.
How do I sit there smile and nod yeah it was fun
And think of the tears I shed lying in the shower.
These mountains that break me.
The girl I yelled "fuck you" at today as she ran and asked for money.
The third that morning hour.
Has it been fun?
Does that matter?
Do I matter?”
It all must seem like an abomination from your perspective. I sound miserable and that’s because right now I feel it. But it’s not because the world I saw was dark stormy and scary but because that world I saw I think I prefer to this one. It’s the brightness over there that makes the couch I sit on now lonely and gross. I can’t stop squinting. Why is it so bright?